Good Book

"The Great Game", by Peter Hopkirk. I bought it because I had seen a good reference to it at Abu Muqawama. When it came, along with "World War Z", I looked at it and thought "500+ pages of history about Central Asia, yeah, right, this is going to be dryer than sand." So I put it aside.

This past week I read it. It was very readable, I'd even call it a fast read, or as fast as you're going to read just north of 500 pages. The first chapter starts with the Mongol Invasion; this is the first paragraph:

You could smell them coming, it was said, even before you heard the thunder of their hooves. But by then it was too late. Within seconds came the first murderous torrent of arrows, blotting out the sun and turning day into night. Then they were upon you - slaughtering, raping, pillaging and burning. Like molten lava, they destroyed everything in their path. Behind them they left a trail of smoking cities and bleached bones, leading all the way back to their homeland in Central Asia. "Soldiers of the Antichrist come to reap the last dreadful harvest," one thirteenth-century scholar called the Mongol hordes.

If you want a long-term look at how we got to the current state of affairs in Central Asia, this book should be on your real-short-list.